Friday, March 2, 2012

Almost Two

Yes, our little girl is just weeks away from turning two! And our little family is just weeks away from the arrival of number two, in the form of Rose's little brother. We have had busy times over the past few months, including lots of holiday festivities, visits from all the grandparents, moving into our new house and exploring our new neighborhood.

Rose's vocabulary and sentence building skills are still exploding with new words, phrases, songs and stories every day. She loves to describe events as they are happening and talk about them at length for days (such as, "The snow on the car melted and turned to water, but there's a little bit on the grass."). She talks about how she's feeling when she's happy and when she's sad ("I'm sad, I miss Sheepers."). Lately she likes to talk about things she did "last week" meaning any time before the present time ("I saw Grandpa last week.").

In our new neighborhood, Rose enjoys walks to visit the playground, the library, the neighbors' chickens, the ice cream parlor with her dad ("Bye-bye Momma, see you soon."), and the local pizza joint ("Pizza! At the restaurant, Momma."). Rose is still taking swimming classes and loves the water. She jumps into the pool with a big, proud smile on her face and loves to go under water with my help. This week, she tried out goggles and loved them. When she has floating rings on her arms, she is pretty comfortable floating by herself ("By self, Momma!").

The terrible twos have probably been developing for a little while now, though maybe I have no idea what I'm in for in the next year. At least when she says no lately, it's in the form of "No thanks!" or "No thank you!" It doesn't quite make up for the impending tantrum, but it's better than plain "No" all the time.

Here are a few random pictures from the past few months and two videos:

At OMSI, our science museum:

One of our last walks in the Pearl before moving. Rose gets lots of compliments on her purse from Auntie April!

Brunch with Grandpa Quinn and Nana.

Enjoying the wheeled madness at our local community center open gym.

Just another stroll through the 'hood.

Being silly after pulling out her ponytail holders. "Crazy hair, Momma!"

Winter, revisited in March.

Petting the week old lambs at Tige and Peggy's farm. Such fun!

Going down the slide with Nonni.

And we'll end with the famous coat flip that I was finally able to capture on video over the holidays.